This movie is a glorious mess. At times tedious, somewhat disjointed, its groaningly top-heavy tropes and staccato pacing punctuated by 50s technobabble waxing at times extremely prolix actually sustains itself on its own confident attitude. The movie seems convinced it has a story worth telling, and that pulls the viewer through.

The conception of the titular monster though is memorable and creative. I remembered it long after I saw it as a kid.

If you threw a bunch of middling acting, clips from military films, and bargain FX into a blender and hit the button, this would pour out when you were done.

Stiil ... it IS kind of a fun movie.

Kronos (1957)

An object is speeding towards the earth. Six miles wide and traveling insanely fast. Is it an asteroid? Two Scientists and a Lady Scientist race against time to prove that it isn’t!

Kronos! (available free on the archive, brief flashing lights after the water spills into the corner) Kronos was a wonderful watch. This would be a great movie night movie for couples or friends. The movie goes in surprising directions and is rather more modern than you expect, but it’s still a 1950’s sci-fi through and through. It is quite slow at times, and loves stock footage, but there are so many quotable lines that you won’t be bored for long!

It is very misogynistic, but has a knowing sense of humor about that. Like one of the scientists might condescend to the Only Woman In The Cast, but then she’ll throw a snarky quip about him to the other guy. It’s not overall a good look, with the charming Lady Scientist being burdened with the weird brooding lead. But the chemistry is through the roof with these two and the wacky sidekick. So it all kinda jumbles out in the end.

There is some Latino representation! Quite brief, a couple scenes, but there is Spanish spoken. Two real Latino people in the roles too, near as I can tell. I only mention it because it’s quite rare for the period. They are quite complimentary about the food too, though there’s a ‘white guy finds the food too spicy’ gag that probably felt tired even then.

Everyone else is white, which is fine until they wear white labcoats. This confuses the hell out of the AI colorizing thing that’s going on. Pink face, b/w hands happen a lot. Half the fun is trying to figure out what color it will go with for anything. Usually it’s very impressive, but sometimes there will be some wacky things.

You can click the name of the user “George Fergus” for a bunch more movies and tv episodes from that era that he’s AI colorized somehow. This tech is already at the “Kinda Good” phase. I imagine it will be near perfect in a decade. Anyway, guessing at the AI kinda filled in the gaps on the movie, and it mostly worked well enough so I like it I guess. I’ll probably try to find a B/W version to watch for comparison’s sake. I’m sorry, I mean FOR SCIENCE!

Kronos (1957) 10/10 for what it is. Probably a 5/10 in reality, but if you like making fun of movies this one’s gonna be a hoot.